Local Support

Each year, Spring into Tawa is proud to support local groups and organisations in our community. Spring into Tawa, at it's heart, is about community and so we look to support a strong and connected community.

We do this by providing local groups and organisations an opportunity to have a stall at the event to raise money and awareness for their cause. We have kept the price of a community stall at the same low rate for three years now to enable as many groups as possible to be at the festival.

Donations to local causes

In addition, each year Spring into Tawa makes a donation to other local causes or events. Up until and including 2016, a small donation was made from the surplus money from Spring into Tawa to the Tawa Community Light Party. In 2017, we were able to donate $1,000 to the Tawa Community Patrol.

2018 Local Causes - you chose Tawa Youth and Families Trust

In 2018, we identified three local organisations that would benefit from some support. They were:

Tawa Community Patrol

The Tawa Youth and Families Trust

Menzshed Tawa

Through a vote held on our Facebook page, Tawa Youth and Families Trust were selected as the organisation we would support. Read more about the fantastic work that they do below.

We recognise that all these organisations (plus more!) are worthy, so we have come up with ways to support all three. At Spring into Tawa on Saturday 27 October, two fundraising stalls operated:

Darren Fergus from XtremeX was there with his Lamborghini and for a donation you could have your photo taken sitting in the car - proceeds went to the Tawa Community Patrol. Over $100 was raised for the Tawa Community Patrol at this stall.

The Porirua Club operated a chocolate wheel - a donation won you some chocolate. Proceeds from this went to the Tawa Menzshed. The final amount raised at this stall is yet to be confirmed.

Read more about the Tawa Community Patrol and Tawa Menzshed below.

The Tawa Youth and Families Trust

The Tawa Youth and Families Trust was established in 2015, to provide an in-school programme at Tawa College, called 24-7 Youth Work. The role of the Trust is to fund and provide oversight for the work of two Youth Workers supporting students at Tawa College. The two trained Youth Workers, work alongside the school Counsellors to engage with teenagers struggling in some way with school life. The Youth Workers strive to develop authentic on-going relationships, perceived as being independent of the school, that provide a listening ear, mature friendship, encouragement and assistance to make positive choices. The desired outcomes of 24-7 Youth work at Tawa College include, building self-esteem among at-risk youth, improving interactions with authority figures, reducing truancy, making better long-term decisions and increasing leadership skills. We believe these outcomes work towards supporting teenagers to be positive members of their families, school and wider community. We feel privileged to have been chosen as a nominee for The Spring Into Tawa local charity donation. The funds would go towards wages and programme costs of running 24-7 Youth Work at Tawa College.

Tawa Community Patrol

The Tawa Community Patrol is a volunteer group which acts as the 'eyes and ears' of the New Zealand Police and Tawa community. Our aim is to provide a highly visible presence to prevent crime and promote safer communities. The group has grown to 45 volunteer members and operates both day and night patrols. We also assist with crime prevention activities with Police and help during natural disasters and other major events.

The money raised would support our plans to update our patrol cellphone to maintain an effective line of communication with frontline Police staff and the communications centres

Menzshed Tawa

MenZshed Tawa is a community based Charitable Society whose goals are:

To promote the health and wellbeing of seniors in the community by creating asupportive environment where members can meet, socialise and share in a widerange of social issues faced by the older generation; and get to know each other asnew friends.

To develop premises, “the shed”, so that male and female members can learn how touse a wide range of building, joinery, and welding tools on personal and communitybased projects, and in that way get to know each other.

And, for our local children and their schools the MenZshed Tawa will supplyeducation and training programmes where experienced members can teach buildingand joinery skills as part of school programmes and holiday programmes. MenZshedTawa members will also support teachers running similar programmes within theirlocal schools.

The MenZshed Tawa is only just beginning and for the Society to be able to achieve itscommunity goals it needs community support now as there are many start-up costs involvedin setting up and running our MenZshed.The MenZshed Tawa will be open for members on Tuesdays and Saturdays from 10.00 a.m.till 1.00 p.m. starting on the 18th of September for shed development and personal projects.A Grand Tawa Community Opening Day is planned for the 17 th of November starting at10.00 a.m. with community entertainment and activities.If we are lucky enough to receive this award from Spring into Tawa all the money would beused to achieve our goals for Tawa and its community.